Eight months ago, the Big 12 looked dead. Now, after a weekend bombshell, can the Big 12 grab a brand name and set off another round of As the Conferences Turn? After months of Internet rumors of Florida State to the Big 12, someone attached his name to the money-grab idea.

Jon Solomon is a columnist for The Birmingham News. Join him for live web chats on college sports on Wednesdays at 2 p.m.

"How do you not look into that option?" Florida State Board of Trustees chairman Andy Haggard told Warchant.com on Saturday. "On behalf of the Board of Trustees I can say that unanimously we would be in favor of seeing what the Big 12 might have to offer. We have to do what is in Florida State's best interest."

If this threat is serious and the ACC can't appease Florida State, the Big 12 would gladly take the Seminoles. And the ACC would become ripe to get plucked.

Florida State coach Jimbo Fisher sounded on board to explore the Big 12 in comments to The Orlando Sentinel, but Florida State president Eric Barron and AD Randy Spetman say the school is committed to the ACC. Go ask Missouri and Texas A&M how quickly fans and politicians can sway administrators' opinions.

Maybe Haggard is a loose cannon without enough clout. But loose cannons provide political cover to allow substantive dialogue to occur and stir the public.

Would another ACC football school -- Miami, Clemson or Virginia Tech -- join Florida State in the Big 12? Would the SEC then grow its TV population base by trying to get into North Carolina and Virginia? For that matter, would the SEC reconsider Florida State? (Over Florida's dead body.)

All of those questions are ahead of the game. According to several reports, Florida State and the Big 12 haven't even spoken informally. But lose Florida State and the ACC becomes the Big East, paddling upstream to salvage its football revenue.

The ACC's 15-year, $3.6-billion agreement with ESPN from adding Pittsburgh and Syracuse is heavily backloaded, according to Yahoo! Sports. That $17 million a year per ACC school that was reported last week? It's more like $12 million next season and the additional $4 million per school annually won't come until 2021, Yahoo! Sports reported.

Just this month, Florida State acknowledged it may be forced to cut $2.4 million from its 2012-13 athletic budget, in part because of lagging ticket sales in football. So if you're Florida State, what do you do?

You're a football school competing in what will always be a basketball conference. You're surrounded by mega-wealthy SEC members, including rival Florida, that spend more than you can. And you're looking at taking in less TV revenue than Vanderbilt for the foreseeable future.

"With the SEC making the kind of money it does it's time to act," Haggard told Warchant.com. "You can't sit back and be content in the ACC. This is a different time financially. This isn't 10-15 years ago when money was rolling in."

The irony is if Florida State hadn't played mediocre football for a decade, the ACC could have cut a better TV deal without Pitt and Syracuse, which add nothing in football and arrive as a course correction for Tobacco Road basketball. The Seminoles are justifiably holding their nose over the state of ACC football. But they haven't won that league since 2005. Maybe it's wise to beat Wake Forest more than twice in six years before signing up to regularly play Texas and Oklahoma.

Haggard also played up the idea that the ACC caters to Duke and North Carolina basketball by saying -- apparently incorrectly -- the ACC surrenders third-tier TV rights to ESPN in football but retains them for basketball. If Haggard thinks Duke and UNC basketball run the ACC, wait until he sees Texas' control of the Big 12.

Still, the ACC should be worried. Because there's one more conference realignment rule the ACC knows from having poached the Big East.